


God should have made a universe full of nebulas

by lucky_spike



Series: Armageddon and the Associated Entities [4]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Body Horror, Crowley's Fall (Good Omens), Crowley's account of how he sort of sauntered vaguely downward, Happy Ending, Jenga, Other, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), Wings, but not really, demons can't fly, extremely minor canon divergence, grown angel's jingle, not actually that much angst, shit sucks but crowley's had a while to process it so, two supernatural beings having a chat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-26 01:46:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20035843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucky_spike/pseuds/lucky_spike
Summary: “Was it traumatic? Yes. Awful? Absolutely. Do I miss God? Sure, I guess, just like everyone else. But!” He held up the other hand. “We have the other points: I met you, gotforgivenby you which means way more than some distant authority figure by the way, all great. I get to beme, fantastic. I don’t have to talk to Gabrielever, the best.”Some months after the Nah-pocalypse, Crowley decides it's time Aziraphale knew about the whole Falling business.





	God should have made a universe full of nebulas

**Author's Note:**

> Hey-o it's me. Just a quick preface: it's explained pretty well in the story itself that Crowley's wings don't work courtesy of being a demon, but just wanted to give you all a heads up that that is what i slapped the 'minor canon divergence' tag on there for. just a personal headcanon that i like, you know how it is.

He hadn’t meant to Fall. He really, honestly, hadn’t. He had said as much to Aziraphale, once, twice, four hundred times over the years, but he was pretty sure the angel never really believed him. After all, it sounded idiotic. Who Falls by accident? It’s definitely something you mean to do, brought about by a willful wrongdoing without a hint of good intention in your heart. ‘Ah, but,’ the casual observer may say, ‘the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.’ And certainly there are good intention rest-stops along the way, but everybody knows the road to Hell is actually paved with frozen door-to-door salespeople. And, thanks to the ever-changing nature of the world, telephone scammers.

They were in the back room of the bookshop some months after the Nahpocalypse. Azirpahale was sitting on the couch, smiling contentedly and sipping his moscato, one of Crowley’s legs in his lap and the other draped over his shoulders. His wings were out, draped lazily over the back of the furniture, primaries spreading out on the worn floorboards like a bridal train. The demon was lounged back against the arm of the couch, glass of red wine in hand and shoulder-length hair in his face, wings out as well, although not nearly as full as the angel’s: the left one, the better one, was splayed across the floor while the right one, twisted and contracted, broken by the Fall, was cocked between the demon’s shoulder and the couch cushions, the few feathers remaining warped by the awkward positioning. He was lightly drunk, and he hadn’t yet devolved to declarations of love for the world and Aziraphale, so he was still in control of his faculties. “Did you know,” he said, in a lull in conversation, after Aziraphale had finished a cathartic rant about internet sales, “that I Fell by accident?”

Aziraphale nodded, and made a point of not shifting awkwardly. Crowley often mentioned his Fall in an off-hand way, usually with some degree of pitch-black humor or sarcasm, the same way humans joked about the deaths of loved ones, or horrible tragedies being personally inconvenient in petty ways. “You have mentioned it before, yes,” he replied, trying to keep his tone light. 

Crowley looked into his wineglass pensively. “Guess I have done, yeah.” He swallowed another mouthful. “You wanna hear the story?”

“I -” he paused. His brow furrowed, and he debated sobering up a little. Crowley couldn’t be serious - demons didn’t _tell stories_ about their Falls. At least, not that Aziraphale knew of. Not that he had a lot of experience with demons outside of Crowley and a few vanquished foes from back in the Mesopotamian days. “You’re drunk,” he concluded, reasonably. “Not a good time.”

“Not a much better time, you ask me.” Crowley nudged Aziraphale’s cheek with his knee. “C’monnn, I know you’re curious.”

“My dear, I rather think this is a subject better saved for a more subdued situation,” Aziraphale said quietly, running his hand through the feathers in Crowley’s bad wing. “I wouldn’t want to upset you.”

Crowley groaned, and momentarily went limp. “Aziraphale. You’re killing me.” He looked up to catch the angel’s puzzled expression. “I’m _offering_, angel! ‘M not that drunk, I assure you I’m fully consenting or whatever to this. I saved the bloody world with you - okay, I was there with you when the world was saved, you can stuff it - for Someone’s sake. We’re going to _buy a house together_.” He made a face. “Like a couple of pensioners. You were in my body!”

A sigh. “Well, when you put it that way. But if it’s going to upset you …”

“It’s upsetting me how you keep assuming I’m gonna get upset!” Crowley propped himself up on his elbows, ticking points off on his fingers. “Was it traumatic? Yes. Awful? Absolutely. Do I miss God? Sure, I guess, just like everyone else. But!” He held up the other hand. “We have the other points: I met you, got _forgiven_ by you which means way more than some distant authority figure by the way, all great. I get to be _me_, fantastic. I don’t have to talk to Gabriel _ever_, the best.” Aziraphale was watching him, and, slowly, Crowley’s expression softened. “I wouldn’t go back to being an angel, angel. ‘Member what I said to you when we were talking about the apocalypse? Back when I’d just dropped off Adam?”

Aziraphale thought it over. “About the dolphins …?”

“No, Aziraphale, honestly, that’s not even pertinent.” He waved a hand. “You said, ‘well I’ll be damned’, an’ I said, ‘it’s not that bad, when you get used to it.’” He raised an eyebrow and shrugged. “I‘ve had a long time to get used to it. An’ … an’ you’re around which, you know. Doesn’t hurt.” There was silence in the bookshop, and the two studied one another, both thoughtful. “If it’s gonna upset _you_ -”

“No.” Aziraphale held up a hand. “I mean, it might. I … I do not like hearing about bad things happening to you my dear but …” He took a breath. “Crowley, if you want to tell me the story, I’d be honored to hear it out.”

“I want to.” He sat up, and then laid back down, face-first, across Aziraphale’s lap. Absently, the angel buried his fingers into the soft scapulars, and Crowley hissed happily. “Jus’ keep doing that, though. An’ top me off, first?”

Aziraphale did. “Right. You can stop any time if you want to, you know.”

“I do.” He took a breath, and another gulp of wine. “Right. Okay, so -”

**In the Beginning (or rather, Some Period before) …**

The stars stretched out before him, lightyears away and yet practically in his lap, all at once. In his hands, stardust like clay, clinging to his fingers and wrists, slick and gritty. He swirled a palm-full of stars, and watched it move thoughtfully, and considered. 

Raphael had said they needed more asteroids, planetoids, comets, all that tosh, and less stars. _No more nebulas_, he had been told firmly, with a disapproving look, as the Archangel sighed and looked over the lesser angel’s work. _It’s a nice nebula though_, Raphael said. _I’ll find somewhere to put it. Just … stop making them. Try a comet, they’re kind of the same._

He had tried a few comets. They were not the same. They were, well, boring. They didn’t do anything besides slingshot around a galaxy, messy and dribbling. A nebula - _a really good nebula_ \- now that is a big interesting star factory, swirling around and bouncing on its own, doing what it likes once you let it go. It makes things, things which nobody in Heaven has anything to do with - totally independent. Some explode in a shower of ions, that’s always disappointing, but sometimes, oh, the ones that succeed are so worth it. Gorgeous and glorious and amazing.

God should have made a universe full of nebulas, the angel thought. He looked back to the stardust, still twisting in his hands, and breathed on it. It ballooned - they always did, if you knew what you were doing - and formed, and lo, a new nebula was born. He smiled at the thing, and hung it in storage. That would be Raphael’s issue, later.

If they didn’t want more nebulas they shouldn’t have made them so bloody delightful, the angel thought. He didn’t say it, though. Not then, anyway.

“What’re you doing?” He jumped and turned to see another angel - a familiar face, although after the Fall he wouldn’t be able to recall her name, only that she is now called Amii - watching him intently. “I thought old Raphael said no more nebulas.” A quizzical look. “I distinctly remember something about comets.”

The angel sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, but, you know, comets … comets are boring. Not much of one for comets, me.” He shrugged. “And what’s an extra nebula or two, when you get down to it? Space’s big.”

“Space is big,” the other angel intoned, thoughtfully. “But Raphael is an Archangel, with orders straight from, you know.” A cocked eyebrow, or at least the impression of one - forms were more a loose concept in Heaven, in that time before time. “You don’t want to go against those, eh?”

The lesser angel hedged. “Well, no, obviously, but you know … Well, it’s not like anyone’s checking up. If it was _really_ supposed to be comets only, don’t you think I would be like, incapable of making anything else? I mean why not just make me forget nebulas? Or just … instill me with an overwhelming love of comets?” He crossed his arms. “Way I see it, until someone tells me to stop -”

“Raphael did.”

“_Well_ …”

The other angel chuckled. “You sound like someone else I know. It could get you in trouble, you know.”

“How?” the lesser angel challenged. “She is a being of true love and forgiveness, isn’t She? What, I’m going to get a stern talking to and maybe a transfer to a different department? Hah, ok, I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing until then.” He stopped, and then wheedled a little. “You know everyone likes a nebula.”

“They do.” The angel-now-demon-known-as-Amii looked to the stardust residue coating the lesser angel’s hands. “Clean your hands off, I think you ought to meet someone.”

“Who?” but even as he asked, he was shaking the stardust loose into the cosmos, forming clouds and smears of light that drifted away.

“You ever met Lucifer?”

He raised his eyebrows. “The Lightbringer? No, not me. I’m not nearly important enough.”

“I think he’d like you.”

“Do you?” he asked, with genuine surprise. 

The other angel nodded. “I do. I think you two should talk. Here, follow me - I’ll introduce you.”

And she did. Lucifer was everything you’d expect from someone called ‘Lightbringer’: charming and charismatic and easy to talk to, easy to go around with. They drank of the manna together[*], surrounded by a pack of other angels of all sorts of ranks, and talked about the universe, about stars, about God, and a lot of other things in between. “Makes you wonder if Creation really is infinite, you know?” the starmaker said to Lucifer once. “Or is that just, you know, a _rumor_. I mean, why limit what all we can make, what all we can put it in if it’s infinite?”

“It does make you wonder,” Lucifer said, thoughtfully. “I’d like to get answers if I could, I think. I’d like to ask, anyway.” There was a chorus of general agreement. He turned his attention back to the starmaker, and nudged his shoulder. “You know, I heard She is working on something new. A new planet.”

“What? All by Herself? You’re having me on.” He laughed. “Why would She do that?”

“Another good question,” Lucifer said, a glimmer in his eye. “Gabriel says he’s seen Her working on it. Supposedly -” he lowered his voice, and the assembled angels leaned in, although in this place, where time and space and sound were optional, they didn’t really need to. “Supposedly, She is making new life to live there and only there. A new Creation. A microcosm of our Host. And She has a Great Plan.” Murmurs of confusion, surprise. Questions of ‘why?’ and ‘what’s wrong with us?’. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” Lucifer asked. “I reckon, if She’s so omnipotent and infallible, why would She need to replace us? She created us. Theoretically, we should be perfect. But, I guess not.” He stood, spread his hands. “If we need replaced, after all. So is She really infallible?”

“I mean maybe it’s like a reboot?” the starmaker suggested. Lucifer turned his attention to him, and he realized, suddenly, that he wasn’t sure what a reboot really was, which rather hindered his ability to make a simile. “You know, like Angels 2.0, all the good stuff plus some upgrades.”

“Upgrades,” Lucifer said flatly.

“Yeah, you know.” The starmaker wilted a little, suddenly the center of attention, but he plowed ahead anyway. “Maybe more wings or something.”

“And then what of us?” Lucifer asked, voice low. Suddenly, this was not a light conversation. This was not just idle questions in a group of like-minded people. “When there are Angels 2.0? Are we obsolete? Or just playing eternal second fiddle? A piece to be moved around in this … Plan?”

“I …” He stammered. “I don’t know.”

“Wouldn’t you like to ask?”

He paused. “I suppose I would, yeah.” He thought about it, and then, surprised, found his resolve hardened. “Yeah, you know, you have a point. Why _would_ She do it all again?”

Lucifer nodded. “Be a lot easier if someone could ask. Be a lot easier if we could … talk it over. Maybe She needs a little more _input_ in decision-making.” There were murmurs of agreement. The starmaker, with a sinking feeling, frowned. “Angels, brothers, sisters - I hear your concerns. And, you know, as a member of the first circle, well …” He gave the impression of drawing himself up, and the light flaring off of him burned brighter. “I think She and I need to have a chat. I think we deserve answers.” Lower still, he added, “And I think we need to know if She has them.”

The chat, as evidenced by the heaps of mythology, did not go well. But you know that part, broadly. The angels who had gathered around Lucifer - including the starmaker - were hunted down in Heaven. Some, angry that their questions were to remain unanswered, or furious that they were to be replaced by Her newest creation, fought back. Blood was shed. Angels, flaming swords gripped in their hands, swarmed unto other angels, who parried, or ran, or were unmade. 

The starmaker ran. He ran as far as he could, to the furthest reaches of space, but it was no use. The others had seen him. “You never were good at following orders,” Raphael said, flaming sword held aloft. It would have been easier if he looked angry, but he didn’t. He was crying. “I should have known. I should have - I should have known.”

“I didn’t mean it.” The angel held his hands up, placating. “I’ll make all the comets you want, Ralph, really, I promise, no more nebulas.”

“No. No, you had your chance.” He advanced, and his expression hardened. “Don’t make this harder than it is. Please.”

“Raphael, please, you _know me_, always getting up to something but it’s all, you know, well it’s never anything really it’s always just talk and -”

“Please stop talking.” The sword hefted. “Please. You talk too much. You talk too much, and you’re too good at it, and I can’t do this right now.”

The angel, wings wrapped around himself, hands raised, drifted back in space, bumping into a galaxy, pitching it on its axis. “Raphael -” he stopped. He couldn’t not stop. There was a flare of light - blinding, horrible light - and screaming. A form, and nobody needed telling who it was, was falling from on high. He was burning, too, as he fell, plunging downwards. Up to that point, nobody had realized there was anything _below_ Heaven but he went through the bottom of that, too, and kept falling.

Falling. With a capital ‘F’.

And then there were more. Some jumped. Some were thrown. Some - and nobody was really sure how - just _Fell_, without any observable force acting on them. A lot of them screamed, but some of them didn’t. Somehow, that was worse. They burned like magnesium, streaking through space and out of Heaven, to somewhere Below.

The starmaker watched, and Raphael did, too. And then he turned back, eyes wide.

“Don’t kill me,” the starmaker whispered, his hands reaching into a cloud of stardust, twisting it, trying to hold it, to find comfort. “I don’t want to die.”

“That might be worse,” Raphael pointed out. He hefted the sword. “The Lord is merciful in all things.”

“So which one is the merciful one, then?” Raphael stopped. The sword stopped. Flames - silent and roaring all at once - licked the blade and burned away stardust. “You don’t know. I don’t know. But … but I know I don’t want to die.” He unfurled his wings, and looked down. With one last glance to the Archangel, he said, “Bye, Ralph.”

And he Fell, too.

It wasn’t great. The starmaker had free-fallen before, while he was flying, and it wasn’t anything like that. Think of it like this: falling down a hill on a rollercoaster is all well and good, because you know you’re safely held in the car, and will go around the curve at the bottom, and in forty-five seconds you will be walking away, laughing about what fun that was with your friends, and talking about hitting the ice cream stand for some soft serve. Falling off Niagra Falls, however, doesn’t have a meticulously-engineered curve at the bottom. There’s rocks. There’s definitely not ice cream.

He spread his wings, but it was of no use. He could tumble and twist, he could barrel-roll and somersault, but he could only go _down_. There was no deceleration, no brakes. And there was nothing below, besides the lens-flare pinpricks of other angels who had gone before.

So he Fell. It hurt, too, not physically but deeper than that, as if through every lightyear he pulled away from Heaven a little more of his soul ripped away. Which was absurd, he thought distantly, as he twisted, because his soul probably didn’t have feelings. He had Grace, and that’s what he was losing. He knew that, though no one had told him, because that was the only thing he could think of that would feel that way - the loss of Grace, which up to that point had done the job of trying to fill an empty hole in him that had once been brimming with faith. It was going, he was Falling away from it and burning up as he did, and with every millennium he Fell he felt colder, emptier, weaker. He stopped flapping. Stopped trying to stop. Stopped looking back. He went limp, head down, and let himself Fall. Maybe Raphael had been right.

He Fell for so long that he didn’t notice, not at first, that the air … _changed_. Got hot. Sticky. By the time it broke through to his consciousness - had he gone to sleep? - and prompted him to open his eyes, there was light, too. Sickly, yellow light. He looked to the source, and saw a pit of boiling sulfur.

“Oh, shit,” he said, and tried to hit the brakes.

It sort of worked. He didn’t hit The Pit at terminal velocity, anyway - some did, bursting out of existence with geysers of sulfur and acrid, greasy clouds of smoke. But at a certain speed, hitting liquid might as well be hitting stone, and he knew that. He braked hard, flapping and twisting and rolling and trying to create as much drag as he could and then, when it became clear that the options were to stick the landing or die trying, he dove.

His right wing hit first. It hurt. And then the rest of him caught fire. Or, he thought, it must have done. Nothing else could possibly cause that much pain. He plunged through the sulfur, flailing to slow himself, burning up and screaming silently, but _alive_, until the sensation of sinking stopped. He floated.

He wondered how long he could float there. It wasn’t so bad, not now that it all had stopped. Oh, sure, there was pain, his wing felt absolutely mangled and he realized he had no arms or legs, not anymore, who knew what happened to those, but it could have been worse. Beat death any day, anyway. So he floated, eyes closed, and debated staying there. 

There was a rumble from Below. It had to be Below. It could only _be_ Below. He opened his eyes, and swam up, paddling with the left wing as best he could, and tail - yeah, that seemed about right, what’s a tail anyway? Definitely wasn’t legs - whipping in the sulfur, propelling him to the surface. He broke through, eyes and nose and ears full of sulfur, the taste of ash in his mouth and fire in his lungs - weird sensations, painful but something he realized he was quickly acclimatizing to - and swam. There was an edge, in the distance. Rocky, sharp, smoking, coated in ash, but an edge nonetheless. A ledge to climb on. He swam towards it.

“Not so fast,” someone growled, behind him, and, with a sticky, charred hand on his broken wing, they _pulled_.

He didn’t think about it. It happened on something like instinct, although he was fairly certain that he didn’t truly have instincts. But either way, they pulled, and he struck, whipping around in an impossible arc and sinking long, needle-thin fangs - fangs? - into the other fallen angel’s bulk, bearing them below sulfur and hissing - _hissing_, that was new - the entire time. They screamed for a time, until they didn’t. Eventually, they let go, and they sank. He kept swimming.

The ledge was sharp, and he hissed when it scraped him while he dragged himself up it, but it was solid. His left wing gave him leverage enough to haul himself up to the waist, to get his … no. He didn’t have a waist. No, this wasn’t right.

For the first time, he risked a look at his form, limbless and burnt. And he hissed again, surprised and afraid and angry and lost, all at once, with about forty other emotions thrown in for flavor. For a bare minute, he debated letting go, falling back into the sulfur, and sinking down to the rumbling thing below. And then he snarled, and slithered out of the pool.

There were others around the pool. He slithered over the rocks, raw wounds on his belly dragging and scraping, a new agony with every move, and kept his distance, the other one in the pool still fresh in his mind. There were bodies, too. Dead angels - no, not angels, something else, now - scattered around, broken and lifeless and alien-looking. He stopped among a group of them and thought. Others were coming out of the pool, others were still Falling in. There was screaming, and gnashing of teeth, and even as he watched one tore into another, not unlike what he’d done, and began to eat. _To eat_. He shuddered and sank low to the ground, curling his body into a tight coil, broken wing held as close as he could. He waited. It would stop, eventually. It had to.

He was right, ultimately. The streaks of light from Heaven slowed, and then stopped entirely. He watched carefully, just to be sure, and then, cautiously, slithered forward. There was a gathering, ahead. A group. And nobody appeared to be eating one another, which was a bonus.

A heavy hand - hot, but not burning - landed on his back. He screamed and coiled, winding up to strike. “Relax!” He stopped. It wasn’t the same voice, not quite, but close. He turned around, and blinked in the face of a pillar of infernal flames. “Hail and well met.” The flames condensed, took form, almost like an angel but shifted to the left, who was waving at him. It looked, if it could be possible with milky white eyes and a mouthful of flames, apologetic. And familiar, in a distant sort of way. “What a mess that turned out to be, huh? I saw you fall - you’re the starmaker, right?”

He hissed, and tried to find the name. It evaded him. The other shook her head. “Not anymore. I know what you’re trying. But you felt the Grace leave you, yes?” He had. He hurt, and he ached, and he felt cold and empty and sick inside. “Our names went with it. You may call me Amii, now.”

“Amii,” he parroted, forked tongue and fangs and alien name unfamiliar in his mouth. “You knew me.”

“I did, if you were the starmaker. Can’t quite recognize you in that form, though - you want to try for something like you used to do?” She paused. “Or you can stay like that, since it’s technically your true form now. You’ll get used to it. Part of the deal.”

“The deal?”

“The deal,” Amii agreed. “The demon deal. It’s what we are now: demons. Fallen angels, technically, but Lucifer isn’t so hot on anyone using that term. I’d avoid it, if I were you, when you see him.”

“Demonssssss.” He looked around then, suddenly apprehensive. “Where’ssss Lucifer?”

“I’ll take you to him.”

“_No_!” He backed up, over the bodies of other fallen angels - demons - eyes wide. “No, no, not again -”

Amii grabbed the broken wing, dragging on the ground, and the former starmaker froze. Amii looked, for a moment, profoundly sad. “No choice now, I’m afraid. We are his. He is the King of Hell, and the King of Demons, and you have to go meet him.” She tried to smile. “At the very least, you need a name.”

“I had a name.”

“Not anymore. Come on.” She tugged, but was met with continued resistance. She sighed. “You don’t want to make him call you. Easier if you go on your own.”

“Let me go.”

Amii did. She watched, then, as the other slithered alongside him, and they started toward the crowd of other _demons_. “You can still heal yourself, if you want, and I can teach you how to assume the shape you used to have, approximately. It’s manageable. You survived, that’s the big thing.” She looked to the broken wing. “Wings can’t be fixed, though, I’m afraid.” She heard the sharp intake of breath from the other, and explained, “Lucifer told us She said that we will be doomed to crawl and eat dust for the rest of eternity as punishment for the rebellion.” She let her own wings out, such as they still were, both burned away to charred stumps spotted with sparse feathers.

“_Rebellion_? I didn’t rebel. I just asked questions.”

“Same thing, I guess.” She continued, the serpent beside her, until they reached the gathered crowd. There was a line leading to Lucifer, and Amii indicated the end. “You have to wait. You need a name. If you don’t go willingly, he’ll call you. It’s not very pleasant.”

“I’ll wait.” He slithered to the back of the line, past grotesque beasts that he didn’t have names for and others that had tried to resume their angel forms, but were marred by the Fall with boils and wounds and burns. He wondered, vaguely, what he would look like if he took that form right now. He looked down to his body again, bright black scales on his back and red on the belly, scars and burns scattered all over, and decided against attempting a transformation. He hissed, and drew his left wing in, and coiled up to wait.

Time hadn’t been invented yet, so the serpent didn’t have any idea of how long he waited, but when he finally reached the front of the line, the horror and pain and sadness had faded to a sort of background hum and were replaced at the forefront with _boredom_, which was a strange emotion to feel grateful for but an improvement nonetheless. He was also sick of the bull with the flaming eyes and nostrils and mouth behind him, lowing and stepping on his tail. He had been looking forward to getting this over with, but at the front of the line he stopped. Lucifer regarded him through coal-black eyes, luminescent flesh burnt off entirely, leaving only ruddy red leather. He had a crown of horns, twisting out of his head, a scaled tail like the lesser demon’s own, and the legs of a beast with cloven hooves. He had been so beautiful, before. Now, he was a monster.

Maybe he should not have been so eager to get this over with. Nevertheless, cautiously, he slithered forward, eyes downcast. 

“A serpent.” Lucifer observed. “You need a name.”

“Yes, Lord.”

Lucifer considered it. “Crawly,” he declared, finally. The serpent would have winced if it had the facial musculature to do it. Crawly? It was too on the nose for him. Maybe he could change it … no, he thought quickly, pulling the brake lever on that train of thought with everything he had. No, that’s what got him into this whole mess in the first place. Taking liberties. Asking questions.

On the other hand that he no longer had, however, what more could they do to him? He burnt and felt dead inside, he ached, and he’d lost the ability to fly. His wings were ruined. He could barely speak without hissing. He surprised himself in that moment with a spark of optimism - really, in this place? - and thought, _Nowhere to go but up_.

Lucifer spoke again. Oh. Had he lingered too long? “Demon Crawly.”

“Lord, at your command.”

“I recognize your voice.” A hiss slipped out of Crawly, nervous and shaking and weak. He shrank back as Lucifer looked him over imperiously. “Show your other form.”

He couldn’t have resisted if he tried. He had never changed shapes before, slipping an angelic shape on like a suit, but it was easy. Most magic is easy, as all angels know: you just have to know one or two tricks about the backstage workings of physics and space-time, but once you’ve got that down there’s nothing to it. He had been a starmaker; twisting space-time had been his pre-breakfast routine. He shifted from serpent to his old form, or something approximating it, and there was no pain to it, which surprised him. Messy red hair fell into his eyes and then past his chin. He reached up to brush it away, and froze. His hand - the hand that had made stars and nebulas and waved stardust into the universe - was charred, burnt black, the ends of his fingers drawn out into claws. The char traced up his arms, ending just below the elbow and fading into scales instead, the same black and red of his serpent form. Cautiously, watching the claws like they might attack him of their own volition, he brushed his hair back, and experimentally brushed his nose. Flesh, not scales. Interesting. Horrific, but interesting.

Lucifer was watching him. “I know you. I spoke with you, not long before the Fall.”

He bowed, because he wasn’t sure what else to do. “You did, Lord.”

The King of Hell regarded him for another moment, appraising him up-and-down, and then gestured to a row of demons standing to his left. “Stand with them, demon Crawly.”

He did. He didn’t ask why. On some level, he was glad for the command, because in this form his legs didn’t seem to want to work properly - he might have been angel-shaped, but he still wanted to slither. He staggered to the line of waiting demons and stood at the end, lifting his broken wing as high as he could without worsening the pain, trying to keep the end of the phalanx from dragging along the sharp rocks. He wobbled on unfamiliar legs and fought back a wave of a very new feeling. He wasn’t sure he liked it.

Below the pain and the grief was _hate_, oh how that burned inside of him like nothing ever had before. Hate for Lucifer, and for his bloody questions, hate for Amii for introducing them, hate for Raphael and his fucking comets and hate for … for Her. It made him feel sick, when he thought about Her. He was so angry with Her, so furious, but then grief would surge up like a geyser and bank the heat of the hate, until another wave of anger fed it back alive. _He_ had been the one that stepped out of line, it was _his_ fault, not Hers. But then - why cast him out? He just had _questions_. She was supposed to be infinitely understanding and benevolent, forgiving and loving. Was she really so unable to handle a few simple questions?

_I just wanted to make galaxies_, he thought, watching Lucifer name demon after demon. Another lank strand of hair fell into his eyes, and he left it. He didn’t want to see his own hand again. He didn’t want to see the ash where stardust had just been. He ached, he felt tired to his very core and nauseous, like he might never eat again, but yet … he was alive. That was better than death. Right?

With trembling hands - claws - he reached out and gathered his broken wing closer to himself, combing the three primaries that were left with long, shaky strokes.

The demon next to him was watching him, black eyes empty and gleaming in the light of the brimstone. A frog, seated on the top of his head, croaked. “Who are you?” The demon asked.

“Crawly, I guess.”

The demon considered it. “I’ve never heard of you. Are you a Duke?”

Crawly blinked - ah, so he did have eyelids in this form. “I don’t think so,” he answered, eventually. “Are you?”

“I am Duke Hastur.” He looked vaguely disgusted that Crawly was not a Duke. “Why has our Dark Lord asked you to join these ranks?” Crawly had no idea. He said so. “Perhaps we will eat you later.”

Oh. He hadn’t considered that. Duke Hastur smiled not-very-nicely. A maggot crawled out from between his broken teeth, and re-entered his nose. Crawly shivered, and resisted the urge to transform back into a snake. At least there were no maggots. Not unless, he thought, he wanted to add them later, maybe. Which he had trouble believing he ever would. Rather than slither away, he stepped half a foot away from Hastur, and held his broken wing closer. The bones ground, and the joints, but he found a position that was nominally less painful than any other, and did his best to maintain it. It was healing up, he realized as the wing cracked and twisted in his hand, and some of the pain faded. Badly, still broken, but it was healing anyway.

It would never heal right. Guess it didn’t matter. At least it was still there - one of Hastur’s had been broken off entirely, oozing blood and ichor, maggots feeding at the stump. 

As the Fall had stopped, the Naming stopped eventually, too. Lucifer stalked around the assembled demons, and addressed them. They were Fallen. They were damned to an eternity of suffering and pain, never to be forgiven for their sins. They were supposed to be kind, and benevolent, and faithful and loyal and obedient, and they had all violated that in some way. Must have done, to Fall. Crawly thought of his questions as his stomach rolled. Lucifer, too, grieved, pain apparent in every word, and near the end he cried out, voice breaking with pain and loss, and all of the demons fell to their knees, crying and hissing and screaming and roaring, as his pain washed through them, twisting and burning - burning again, just like when they were Falling, burning _burning_ \- and flames leapt up from The Pit. 

Crawly would have cried, but he couldn’t. Serpents can’t cry. He clenched his fists over his ears instead, claws digging into his palms and raining ash down around his head, on knees and elbows, and whimpered until it stopped. The pain left him curled on the rocks, trembling and weak. Lucifer was talking again, and Crawly was aware of a rough hand on his shoulder, dragging him to his feet. 

“The Dark Lord wishes to speak to us privately,” Duke Hastur snarled. “Stand, serpent.” There was no command to it - Hastur had no power over Crawly - but he stood anyway. Around them, demons were shuffling away, blank-eyed and staring. Crawly watched as they started picking up rocks, or digging them with their bare hands, fingers breaking and bleeding as they chipped the stones away, only to heal and re-break. He swallowed. A command, then. Had to be. But his mind was … clear, relatively. Considering recent events, anyway. So it was not a command for him.

He reached for his wing, for the comfort of his own feathers, and was surprised to find he could bring it around a little without pulling it. The pain had faded, too. Healed, then. Stiff and scarred and most definitely useless for the rest of eternity, but healed. How long had they been here?

Lucifer spoke. “Princes, Dukes, Knights … Crawly.” He stalked down to Crawly and lingered there, amused almost, Crawly thought, if that wasn’t a completely absurd thought (he must be starting to lose it, and who would blame him?), before turning and stalking back up the formed ranks. “The free-thinkers. The ones who thought it through.” He breathed out, and embers and flames flickered from his nose. “We were right. There were no answers. There was nothing beyond expected unconditional obedience, and willingness to comply with a _Great Plan_. And we were right, too - there is a new creation. She has chosen them, made them in her image. _Our_ image, but imperfect.” He snarled. “But they _obey_. They do not question. They only love and do as they are told. She has created a world for them, and linear time, and they have been enjoying it for one day.” He spat the word. “They will live forever in a garden She has made for them, and go forth and multiply and be Her favored creation.”

“It should have been us,” one of the Knights murmured.

“Unless …”

Crawly blinked again. “Unlesssssss?” he whispered. Lucifer couldn’t have heard him, it was impossible. But he looked to Crawly anyway.

“Unless they can be tempted to wander astray.” Lucifer began traversing back down the line. “Unless we can interfere with this Great Plan. Unless we can corrupt their souls and bring them to our Pit with us. Unless we can ruin Her most favored creation, as She ruined us.” He paused to regard one of the demons, who mostly looked like a buzzing cloud of flies. “You were the ones who questioned. You will be my Prince, and lead the others to do this, Beelzebub.”

“Yes, Lord.”

“And the rest of you will serve your roles as well. Corrupt, tempt, bring them down to us. But not yet.” Lucifer had returned to Crawly, watching the demon with eyes black like obsidian, like lava cooling in the sea. “Because they don’t know, yet, that they can disobey. They only know right. They have no frame of reference for wrong. They cannot know without that power being bestowed on them, which of course She did not do.”

_Probably learned Her lesson_, Crawly thought. _Won’t make the same mistake twice._

“Which is where you come in, demon Crawly. You’re very good with words, I noticed.”

Crawly looked to Lucifer like a rabbit staring down an oncoming semi. He should respond, he thought, or say something, but all the words were scrambled around in his head like so much flotsam in a flooded river, jamming up at the dam of his mouth and leaving him open-mouthed and staring. “I - ngk - Lord, ssorry, I shall teach … ?”

“No need.” Lucifer waved a claw. “Not at all, Crawly. There will be a tree, on which will grow fruit that contains the knowledge of good and evil. One bite, and they will have knowledge beyond any they’ll be capable of now. They will have the capacity to question, and to learn, and to doubt. They will obtain _free will_. They will no longer be beholden to Her.”

Crawly nodded. “Ah. Right. Sso find the tree, grab a fruit -”

“No need. The tree is in the garden.”

“What? Why do that?” he asked, before his brain caught up with his mouth and he remembered who he was speaking to. 

“To ensure their obedience, I assume.” Lucifer smiled, thin and terrible and full of too many teeth. “All you have to do, Crawly, is talk. Ask a few questions. I cannot go myself - She will know if I appear there, and She has guards posted in the garden and the walls. Talk to them, and they will Fall as we did, in time.”

A lick of hate rolled over the grief for a minute, and Crawly sneered. Yes. Yes, make them fall. Misery loves company. And if She didn’t want questions, well … He could have laughed. Good luck with that. You give something sentience, questions will follow. “Yesss, Lord.” He bowed his head. “It will be done.”

“Good. There.” Crawly’s gaze followed Lucifer’s claw as the King of Hell gestured to a craggy cliff face, high over The Pit. “There is a crack in the cliff, it will lead to the Garden. If you succeed, you will be rewarded with privileges far above your station, demon. If you are caught, and you fail -” Lucifer shrugged “- there are others. I will find another who can spin words as well.”

Crawly considered it, in the privacy of his own head. And then he watched another demon claw a rock apart, weeping and breaking and re-forming just to do it again. He would succeed, then. Success was the only option. He squared his shoulders and focused on his form - look natural, look tempting. Scales and char faded, replaced with plain flesh, the wings disappeared, and the fangs shortened to incisors. His face _burned_ on the right side, and he raised a hand - a normal hand, he could have gasped - to feel the raised scar. He didn’t have to see it to know, as he traced the curls under his fingers, that it was a serpent. “Got it, Lord.”

“Very tempting,” Lucifer growled, not unhappy, tracing his claw along Crawly’s jawline. “But you will be spotted easily by the guards in this form. You’ll have to use the other form.”

“Oh. Oh, right.” Another moment of focus - it was getting easier with every time - and he changed again, back to the serpent, wings still safely tucked away. Lucifer nodded, approving. 

“Better. Now, get up there and _make some trouble_.”

-

Crowley - definitely Crowley now - sighed as Aziraphale ruffled his fingers through Crowley’s coverts. “And then you know the rest,” he concluded. “So that’s it. Turns out I’ve always been an idiot.” When Aziraphale didn’t reply right away, he looked up, rolling onto his side to get a better look. The angel, predictably, was crying. Crowley frowned, opening his mouth to make some flip remark, but Aziraphale took his face in his hands, oily from the feathers but still warm and pleasant.

“You’re not an idiot,” Aziraphale said softly. “You’re … yourself. You’re definitely Crowley, you’ve always had questions, but you’re not an idiot.”

“There are literal millennia of evidence that ‘Crowley’ and ‘idiot’ are synonymous, angel. Oof.” Aziraphale had pulled him into a hug, clutching him tightly to his chest. Crowley flapped, more ineffectively even than usual as his left wing was snagged on the arm of the couch. “Hang on, wait, argh, cramp, _let go_, angel, let me just.” There was more flapping, some hasty repositioning, and Crowley leaned back into Aziraphale. “Right, you can resume.”

“You’re not an idiot,” Aziraphale murmured again into Crowley’s hair. “Being inquisitive is the opposite of that. You only had questions.”

Crowley swallowed, and forced out a bitter laugh. The Fall … that was a long time ago. There were centuries where he wouldn’t sleep, and if he did he would wake up with screaming nightmares of the burning and the pain, the Leviathan roaring in the deep. That had faded around, oh, call it the third century. “It is a part of you but it does not define you,” Yeshua had told him - her, then - centuries before, while they’d stood at the foot of Chichen Itza and admired the jungle around. “You define yourself.”

“Says the son of God,” Crowley - Crawly, then - had pointed out. 

Yeshua shrugged. “It’s a part of myself that I am happy with, for all the good and bad it will bring.” He’d looked sidelong at Crawly. “But you’re not happy with yourself.”

“I can’t undo it.”

“No. But could you learn to live with it? Incorporate it into your past, a piece of the history, and then write new history in the future?”

Crawly had thought about it while the Central American jungle faded away, and the snow-capped peak of Fuji soared above them. “S’Mount Fuji,” she’d said, while she continued to think about Yeshua’s suggestion. “Could move you here if you want to. No Pontius Pilate.”

“It’s very nice,” Yeshua agreed, “but no, thank you.”

There was silence as Crawly stared at the mountain peak, and Yeshua looked around, smiling softly at the people bustling around them, paying them no mind. “I can’t really ever get away from it,” she concluded. “I was given a name. It defines me. _Crawly_. The Serpent of Eden. Fallen angel. Damned for all eternity.”

“Change your name,” said Yeshua, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You make your own name.” Crawly had blinked, which was a rarity. Yeshua laughed. “Those who accept it will move forward with you, those who do not will stay in your past.”

“Except for my boss.”

Yeshua had sighed. “Well, bosses never are particularly good at remembering anybody’s name, anyway.”

“Crowley?” the demon blinked, and found, instead of Yeshua’s dark brown eyes, lined with smile lines even at such a young age, there were Aziraphale’s blue eyes, bright and curious. “Are you alright?”

Crowley frowned. “Sorry. Was miles away.”

“It happens. I was saying,” he went on, gently, “that I _like_ that you’re inquisitive. I like that you ask questions. Can you imagine? Can you imagine a world where there _wasn’t_ a demon who looked at the antichrist, the impending war between Heaven and Hell, and said, ‘well, why’s this all got to happen, then?’” He brushed a lock of Crowley’s hair aside. “Terrible to think of, dear boy. I like your questions.”

“Glad someone does.” He sighed, then took a few deep breaths against Aziraphale’s chest, while the angel rubbed his back. He was floating, a little - he’d never told the story of his Fall from beginning to end before, and while it was something he had filed away in ‘the Past’, incorporated into the rest of his essence, his being, the _experience_ that is Crowley, to tell it like that made it feel just a little bit fresher. Just a little reminder. He took another breath, and felt fire in his lungs and tasted ash on his tongue, but then he smelled Aziraphale’s cologne. The floating feeling lingered, but it lost its grip on him, and a few more breaths, his face nuzzled into the nape of the angel’s neck, and he was back, back in the old bookshop, back with the angel who loved him even with the questions and the temptations and the stupid choices and the broken wings. 

He took another breath and then, with the resolve of someone who will remember this moment for the rest of their life but also wants to move past it now, not linger and let it sour, he sat up, slid backwards on the couch until his back rested against the armrest and his legs were across Aziraphale’s lap. He adjusted his wings, swinging them over the arm of the couch, and then took Aziraphale’s right wing into his lap, picking at the feathers and combing them, out, though they didn’t need it. It gave him something to do with his hands, though, and for that he was grateful. “But yeah. I never meant to Fall. Just had a few questions. I’m still not sure why that warranted Falling, though.”

Aziraphale was watching him. “May I be honest? May I ask an honest question?”

Crowley considered it. He took another swig of wine. “Alright.”

“Did you have faith that the Lord knew the answers?”

“I … didn’t.” Aziraphale gave him a significant look. “You really think that’s all that it took?”

“Not having faith in the Lord? An angel without faith? Yes, Crowley. I think that’s what it took.” He rustled the wing, re-directing Crowley’s hands to another part. The demon obliged without remark. “I have known you for a long time, Crowley. You are an optimist - no, don’t interrupt me - you are an optimist and a believer in self-preservation. You always believe things will work out alright. _But_ by the same token, you also feel that it’s _your_ duty to ensure that. You have no faith that without your own efforts, things will be alright.”

Crowley frowned. “That’s not true.”

“My dear, you fought Armageddon tooth and nail, every step of the way.” He didn’t mention the part where Crowley had given up, when he thought Aziraphale had died, because that would have necessitated a discussion that Crowley not only has faith in himself but also in _Aziraphale_. It is not a discussion the angel feels like having tonight. “Look at Gabriel - he had nothing but faith that God’s plan would be followed. So did I.”

Crowley looks puzzled. “But you - no, you didn’t, because you tried to change the plan too.”

“Ah, no,” Aziraphale raised a finger. “I have always had faith that God’s plan will be followed. I did _not_ have faith that God’s plan and the Great Plan were the same thing. Gabriel did.” Crowley has raised an eyebrow. “Let me guess - you don’t think God has a plan, yes?”

“Not a good one.”

“Perhaps not by your standards. It’s ineffable.”

Crowley sipped his wine. “In-effing-believable, says me. If it exists.”

“And this is why you Fell,” Aziraphale sighed, patting Crowley on the knees. Crowley frowned. “It’s not a bad thing, Crowley. It is who you are. You are a wonderful, complex, marginally kind - stop, don’t say a word - intelligent, funny, and overall brilliant person. The fact that you are also a demon is not any more defining of the _person_ you are more than your hair color, your height, or the fact that even after 60 centuries you still haven’t learned to walk like a human.”

“Alright, alright.” Crowley took a sip of wine, and then glared at his glass until it refilled itself. “This conversation is making me feel some kind of way.”

Aziraphale looked concerned. “Oh? Good way, or bad way?”

“Not sure. We’re going to have to revisit it again some time.” He was watching Aziraphale over his wineglass, his lap still full of lustrous white feathers. “You think it’s that simple?”

“I have no idea, dear boy. It’s a theory. God alone knows.”

“And She’s not telling,” Crowley agreed. “I want to be drunk now. I can’t stop thinking about philosophy. It’s giving me a headache.”

“That might have been the whiskey shots.”

“No,” Crowley lied. “Come on, angel, let’s drink.” He snapped a finger-gun to Aziraphale’s wineglass, which also refilled. “How about music?”

“Mm.” Aziraphale’s head lolled back against the couch as he savored his sip of wine. It was very good, and he’d been saving it for a special occasion. They had decided that tonight, a night that shouldn’t have existed after the Apocalypse hadn’t come, and they were still together, was as special as any. “No bebop. Let’s play a game.”

“Strip Go Fish, right, I’ll get the cards.”

“No! Crowley.” Aziraphale looked wounded. “Why must you always go right to strip card games? I was thinking a board game.”

The demon groaned. “Oh, come on angel, I hate chess - you know that.”

“What makes you think I was going to say chess?”

“What other board games can you play with only two?” Crowley countered.

“Jenga.” He waved a hand languidly. “Some university students left a set here. Doesn’t require nearly as much thought as the other game they left where you have to make words out of these little tiles.”

“Scrabble?”

“It’s in a bag that looks like a banana.”

Crowley frowned. “I … have no idea. I don’t consider Jenga a board game, by the way.” Still, he stood up, swinging his legs to the floor and swaggering from the back room and into the shop, padding across the old floorboards to the front desk where Aziraphale kept lost items[**]. There was rustling, the distinct clunk of an elderly bong falling to the floor and Crowley cursing as he stuffed it back into the pile of lost gloves, and then more creaking as he returned, Jenga set in hand. “Right, where do you want this? Floor? Table? Table seems a better choice, only it wobbles, hang on, give me a book.”

“I will not!” He handed Crowley a stack of yellowing copies of the _Celestial Times_. “Use these.” Crowley accepted them, kneeling to stuff a suitable amount under one table leg, until the table was steady. He watched Crowley stacking the blocks deliberately, slowly, with the special care of someone who is just a little too drunk for the task at hand. He beamed, and the demon caught him looking.

“You really meant all that stuff you said about me, didn’t you?” His sunglasses had slid down his nose, one side cocked upwards with his crooked grin. “Brilliant and all that.”

“I did. If you hadn’t noticed, I do find you remarkably wonderful.”

“I’d noticed.” Crowley rested his hands flat on the table on either side of the assembled tower. He studied the blocks for a minute, and then, “You know the feeling is mutual, yes?”

Aziraphale’s smile warmed his voice, colored it with affection and peace. “I rather do. That said,” he added, standing unsteadily and making his way over to the table, wings pitching to help him maintain balance, “don’t think my tremendous fondness for you will at all diminish my desire to soundly defeat you in a game of Jenga.”

“I’d be insulted if it didn’t.” He grinned, honest and wide and genuine, before he downed the rest of his glass of wine and re-filled it anew. “Flip a coin for first draw?”

-

* It wasn’t that good. It hadn’t been, lately.[back to text]

** Much like all shop lost and found collections, there were mostly just singular gloves and tatty scarves, but Aziraphale’s bookshop also had in its lost-and-found a lace handkerchief (lost 1884), a hatpin (1908), a fob watch (1936), a bong (1962), several lost bracelets (multiple years), a fanny pack (1987), a pager, (1989), two cell phones (1997 and 2001), an iPad (2012), and several board games (2016-2018). All abandoned Kindles, of which there had been several, had been inhumanely destroyed.[back to text]


End file.
